


Broken Pieces

by Em_Jaye



Series: Good Madness [5]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Angst and Fluff and Smut, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 14:18:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14498853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: "May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness"-Neil GaimanA rainy night in April





	Broken Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> This is not supposed to be April's story. In fact, it was supposed to be a quick little one-off that was going to be posted AFTER the Bucky/Nat story I am working on for April. But life happens and since I'm emotionally dead inside from seeing Infinity War this weekend, I needed to finish some angsty, fluffy smut and cheer myself up. Hope you enjoy!

Darcy shot up in bed with a gasp. A scream stuck in her throat. Eyes wide and frantic. Heart pounding in her ears. She panted, her eyes scanning the room, desperately searching for something familiar. Something to anchor her in the real world. Proof that she was here and not there and that it had all just been a nightmare.

“Hey.” His voice startled her sharply to the right with another gasp.

She squinted in the dark, blinking as her eyes adjusted and she could make out his features. “Steve?” she asked in a voice that was quiet. Uncertain.

“Yeah,” he said, his forehead creased with concern. “Are you okay?” His hand reached out to push away the hair that had stuck to her face.

She took slower breaths, trying to calm her frantic heart. “Yeah,” she said reflexively, shaking her head. “Yeah, no. I’m…I’m—”

“Come here,” he said softly and pulled her in for a hug. His arms wrapped around her tightly; one hand slid up her back and into her hair. “You okay?” he asked again as he rubbed a comforting circle between her shoulders.

“Uh-huh,” she managed, her eyes squeezed shut tightly, trying to banish the memories of what she’d just seen. To purge the guilt and grief and shock that was twisting and writhing in her stomach. She curled her nails against Steve’s t-shirt and took another deep breath, inhaling the smell of his skin and the laundry soap he used. Trying to convince herself that _this_ was real and not that. That he was warm and solid and _right here_ with her. “It was just a dream,” she said, turning her face to his neck. She pulled back with a sniffle and wiped at her eyes. “Sorry,” she shook her head. “Sorry I woke you—”

Steve let his hand slip from her hair to hold her face; he swiped at one of her tears with his thumb. “It’s okay,” he assured her, still looking concerned. “Must’ve been a bad one.”

“Yeah…” Darcy closed her eyes again as her heartbeat finally started to return to normal. “It felt…” she swallowed hard and sighed, trying to shake the lingering images from her mind. “It just felt too real.” She looked down at the bunched covers between them and let out an embarrassed laugh. “Feel kind of stupid for getting so upset.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

She bit her lip. “Kind of?” she said before she looked up again. “No? Maybe?”

Steve looked thoughtful for a minute before he nodded toward the closed door. “Let’s go downstairs for a little bit.” He’d already thrown back the blankets and was standing up, holding out a hand before she could come up with a reason not to. “I’ve got a no-fail cure for nightmares.”

She felt herself smirk. “Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?”

He snorted and rolled his eyes. “Come on,” he reached out and grabbed her hand. “It’ll make you feel better.”

Darcy wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but it was not the steaming mug of hot chocolate Steve pressed into her hands after ten minutes of listening to him putter around in the kitchen. She smiled and took a tentative sip as he sat on the opposite end of the couch and pulled her feet into his lap. The drink was thick and deliciously creamy. It warmed her all the way to her belly with one gulp and urged her to take another. “Mmm,” she hummed and licked the foam away from her top lip. “This is delicious.”

He tapped his mug to hers and took a drink. “Sister Bridget’s top-secret recipe.”

She mirrored his grin and took another sip, trying to pick up on any special ingredients. “What was Sister Bridget’s secret?” she asked when she could find none.

“Vodka,” he answered with a cheeky grin. “Sip it slow.”

“Seriously?” she quirked an eyebrow. “The nuns made you spiked hot chocolate?”

He laughed. “Well, they didn’t make it _for_ us.”

Darcy curled both of her hands around her mug and let it rest in her lap. “I’ll pace myself, then.”

Steve smiled softly and let his fingers trail lightly over her ankles. He had pulled her right foot to the center of his lap and pressed his thumbs into the heart of her arch; a slow massage that banished the aches and pains that accumulated from working on her feet all week. “You remember what you were dreaming about?” he asked quietly.

Darcy swallowed and nodded. “It’ll probably sound stupid,” she admitted.

“I doubt that.”

But she shook her head. “It’s just…”

“Was it about your mom?” When her eyebrows lifted in surprise at his guess, he clarified. “You were talking before you started thrashing around.”

She covered her face with a hand and groaned. “God, that’s even worse.” Her breath left her in another heavy sigh before she frowned thoughtfully. “I just…I go so long without…” she looked up, checking his expression to see if she was going to keep going. If she was going to let herself be this vulnerable. “I don’t know,” she sighed. “It’s like a big, fat scary reminder that I’m still kind of broken. Does that make sense?”

Steve nodded. “Of course it does.” He moved up to the ball of her foot and smiled faintly when she twitched as he brushed a ticklish spot. “But I don’t want you to think you can’t be broken around me.” He looked up with another half-smile. “I mean, that’d be pretty hypocritical. I’m broken as shit.”

Darcy leaned her cheek against the back of the couch and let Steve work out the tension in her heels before she summoned her courage again. “Tell me,” she said softly. He looked up, a question in his eyes. “I don’t want you to think you can’t be broken around me, either.”

He dropped his eyes and studied the freckles on the top of her feet before he cleared his throat. “What do you want to know?”

She wet her lips and chose her words carefully. “Did you like being a firefighter?”

Steve didn’t stop what he was doing, but she could tell question had taken him off guard. She watched him take a breath before he looked up again. “Uh, yeah,” he said, quietly. “Yeah, I loved it.”

She was grateful he didn’t ask how she’d found out he used to be one.

“Is that how you met Peggy?”

The tops of his ears turned pink before his cheeks. “Yeah,” he repeated. “That’s…kind of an embarrassing story.”

Darcy wiggled her toes and felt herself smile. “I want to hear it.”

Steve groaned and swiped a hand over his face. “I—uh. Okay, well, really it was Bucky’s fault we got roped into this stupid…calendar thing.”

She raised her eyebrows and reached for her cocoa again. “Calendar thing?”

His blush only deepened. “Um. You know the uh…the annual calendar that the FDNY puts out?”

“Of course,” she scoffed. “The one with all the sexy—” Darcy cut herself off with a gasp. “ _No_.”

Steve scrunched his nose and nodded. “Yeah. Just the one year, though. We lost a bet.”

Her eyes widened. “Please say more.”

It was his turn to sigh as he continued, his face still contorted with embarrassment. “Uh, yeah, so this would’ve been…2004, I guess? Bucky bet on the Cardinals in the Series against one of the guys at the 205.”

“He bet that you _both_ would pose for the stud calendar?” she asked with a giggle.

“Apparently,” he sighed again. “It’s obviously a voluntary thing and this guy and his buddy were having second thoughts so on this complete long-shot, they bet their place in this line-up on the Sox winning the Series. And naturally, when I found this out, I said ‘sure, whatever’ because there was no way that was ever going to happen.”

She smiled. “Okay, but you did have _eighty-six years_ of cursed Red Sox history on your side…it’s not the craziest thing to assume you wouldn’t have to go through with it.”

He rolled her foot with one hand, cracking and popping some of the tension in her ankle. “Kinda my thought on the whole thing.”

“So where does Peggy fit in to this very wonderful story that I’m already loving so, _so_ much?”

He chuckled and took a drink before he continued. “They did the shoot at her station about a week later and, naturally, all these women—paramedics, admins, other firefighters—just came out of the woodwork to stand around and gawk while we made complete idiots of ourselves.”

“Naturally,” Darcy agreed, trying to smother a smile between her lips.

“And Peggy walked in right in the middle of them shooting _my_ photo which was as close to hell as I’d gotten at that point, and the art director’s yelling at me because apparently I’m a terrible model—”

She frowned. “With that mug? I don’t believe it.”

Steve blushed again and reached for her other foot. “Anyway, everyone was staring at me and I felt like an idiot and Peggy took one look at the situation and started handing out work assignments to everyone who was standing around watching.”

Darcy raised her eyebrows again. “Work assignments?”

“It was like she planned it. I still have no idea how she did it, but every single person who was standing around staring at me was gone with something to do in like, five minutes.” He dropped his eyes to his lap again and smiled softly at the memory. “When it was all said and done I went over to thank her and she said, ‘I don’t like to see anyone objectified, even if it’s for charity.’ And then she said ‘If you really want to thank me, you’ll put your shirt back on, Rogers. I’m only human, you know.”

She laughed and took another sip of cocoa. “Okay, _I’m_ kind of in love with her after hearing that story.” She watched him smile to himself while he ran his thumbs over her heel again. “Can I ask another question?”

He looked up. “Is it about the calendar?”

“Yes.”

Steve sighed. “No, I do not have a copy of it. I’m pretty sure I burned any and all that came my way.”

“Oh, no, I figured you’d say that,” she waved his words away. “But you said this was…2004? So the calendar would have been for 2005, right?”

“Mmhmm.”

She snorted and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my God, my mom totally had a copy of that in her office at the bakery. Which month were you?”

Still pleasantly pink, Steve scrunched his nose again. “I was July.”

“Oh my God, of course you were,” she declared with a shake of her head. “Oh man, Raina would be so proud. It was July for like, three months that year.” She squinted with memory. “I think she had a thing for Mr. April too, if I’m remembering correctly.”

Steve smirked. “Well I won’t tell Bucky he didn’t make the short list, it’d break his heart.”

“Which month was he?”

“I think he was February, but I’ve really tried to block it out.”

She grinned. “Fair enough. How long did it take you to ask Peggy out after that?”

“She asked me, actually,” he said, slowing down his strokes on the bottom of her foot.

“Atta girl,” Darcy commented. “No surprise there.”

“Yeah,” his smile softened again, sadly this time. “And then after Bucky moved to Atlanta and I made lieutenant, I put in for a transfer to her station, so we could work together.”

She pursed her lips and willed herself to ask the next question. “Were you there? The day she…”

He shook his head. “After Charlotte was born we worked opposite shifts.” He cleared his throat. “Just in case one of us got hurt or…” his throat bobbed with a swallow. “And, y’know, because apparently there might be a chance one of us would try to do something stupidly reckless and heroic to save the other if something happened.”

Darcy smiled sadly. “Was that Peggy’s idea or yours?”

“That was all Peg,” he admitted. “I would’ve spent every minute with her if I could have. But she was the Captain and she made the rules _and_ the schedule, so I didn’t get too much of a say in that one.” She watched him struggle with the next part of his story before he spoke aagain.”So, that night I was home. She was supposed to be back by eight because I had to go in at eleven and I remember thinking that I couldn’t wait to go to work because there was a chance I could get some sleep.”  He shook his head again, still clearly grappling with the guilt that particular admission brought back. “The baby was sick and she’d been keeping us both up all night—we were exhausted and snapping at each other and I just….” He sighed. “I wanted to go to work because I loved my job and at least there I knew what I was doing.”

“Steve…” she said softly, wishing she hadn’t asked him to exhume this memory. Wishing that it hadn’t happened at all. That there was something she could do to erase the weight of the loss he carried with him.

“And then it’s eight-thirty, then nine, nine-thirty, no call, no text, nothing. And I’m sitting here with a screaming baby, pissed off, thinking she went out for a drink or something without telling me. Trying to figure out who I’m gonna get to babysit in the middle of the night, getting angrier and angrier and when the phone rang, and I saw it was the station, I picked up and just said, ‘What the fuck? Are you ever coming home?’” Steve stopped and clenched his jaw. “It was the chief. Calling to tell me what happened.”

Darcy swallowed down the lump in her throat and leaned forward to grasp his hand in hers. “You don’t have to keep going” she said softly. “If you don’t want...”

Steve laced their fingers together and squeezed. He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. I…I want to be able to talk to you about this stuff.”

When he looked up again, she was smiling softly. “I want that, too.”

“But you asked if I liked being a firefighter and, yeah,” he repeated himself with a shrug. “I loved it. And I was good at it. It was the only thing I wanted to do since I was five years old but after…” The square of his jaw clenched slightly again. “Even after I took some time off, I uh—I kept…I kept having panic attacks whenever I’d go out on a call. I kept thinking that I was all Charlotte had left and that if something happened to me she’d be...” he stopped himself again. “Anyway, there’s no room in a department for a guy who freezes up every time he sees a burning building, so…” he shrugged again. “I had to figure something else out.”

She squeezed his hand again. “Do you ever miss it?”

“Sure,” he answered easily. “I miss the thrill and the guys and how easy it used to be to do my taxes but…” he smiled again. “But then Charlotte asks if I want to have a dance party or sing karaoke with her and I realize that I would have missed too much if I hadn’t quit. I wouldn’t have been able to go to every parent-teacher conference or girl scout ceremony or dance recital and,” he ran his thumb over Darcy’s knuckles gently. “I probably wouldn’t have met you.”

“I don’t know,” she said with a smile. “I work in a bakery in a hundred-year-old tinder box of a building. You might have met me anyway.”

Steve raised their joined hands and kissed the top of hers. “I think I prefer having met you the way that I did.”

“Me too.” They were quiet for a few moments before she cleared her throat. “I can tell you about my nightmare,” she said. “If you still want to hear it.”

Steve sat back and nodded, detangling their fingers so he could resume rubbing her feet. “I do.”

“I um, I woke up in the dream and I didn’t know where I was. I was in a bedroom that had a bunch of my stuff from when I was a kid—like the blanket my grandma made me and pictures of me and my friends from high school and college and a bunch of stuff I know I’ve either thrown away or given away just…” she paused and pursed her lips in thought, trying to explain how unsettling it had been, right from the start. “It felt like…like it should have been familiar. Like I was somewhere I was _supposed_ to recognize but…”

“But it was wrong,” Steve finished for her, softly.

She nodded. “And it just kept being wrong…every little detail was just _off_ in someway and then as I’m sitting there, trying to figure out what was going on, I heard voices in the next room. So I got up and I went into the hallway and there’s these…” she stopped again to swallow. “There’s these pictures on the walls. Of um…of my mom and me. Only they’re not real. They couldn’t have been real because they’re too recent. They’re of moments she wasn’t alive for—and there are people in them I don’t recognize and while I’m standing there, looking at them, trying to figure out how they got here, I heard her—my mom—say, ‘Oh, there you are, we were starting to get worried.’ And I looked up and she’s just…standing there looking exactly like she did before she got sick—” her voice caught in her throat and she blinked furiously, wondering if it was possible to convey the shock her subconscious had delivered. A perfect, living memory of the way she always tried to remember her mother. Long, crazy curly hair—dark with bold streaks of silver, a faded, oversized t-shirt over a pair of high-waisted jeans and feet that were constantly bare.

“And I should have been happy to see her, right? I should have been overjoyed but I _knew_ it wasn’t real and it was like…like someone was messing with me, you know? Like it was a trick. And I asked her where we were and she kind of laughed and said something about me having hit my head harder than she realized, but she said we were at _her_ house but…” she shook her head. “But we definitely weren’t. And I followed her out into the living room and there was this guy sitting on the couch—this guy I didn’t know, asking if I was feeling better and if I was okay.”

Darcy rubbed at her eyes and sighed. “This doesn’t sound like a nightmare, the way I’m telling it.”

Steve pressed his thumbs into her insole and shook his head. “Keep going,” he prodded.

“I—um—in the dream, I asked where you were,” she admitted and bit her lip. “And Charlotte. And neither of them knew who I was talking about. And I started panicking because everything was just _wrong_ and my mom kept trying to calm me down and tell me everything was going to be okay but I just…” she shook her head again. “It was like a switch had gotten flipped and I just...” she swallowed hard. “It was this realization that if she was still alive,” she glanced around at the living room: the coffee table strewn with her recipe book and a third grade math book, the laundry basket with some of her clothes mixed in with Steve’s and Charlotte’s, waiting to be folded, the armchair that was home to all three of their coats and bags where they’d dropped them the night before. “If she was alive then somehow I couldn’t have any of this.”

The lines of concern on Steve’s forehead deepened with a thoughtful frown that urged her to continue and try to make herself clear. “And I know, obviously, that’s not true,” she rushed on. “Of course, I know that. But in the dream, it felt like there was a choice—or, or maybe there _had_ been a choice, at some point. And I…” she paused and pressed her lips together. “I had made the wrong one, somehow because…” she looked up and blinked back the tears that had momentarily blurred her vision.

“Darcy,” Steve moved to let her legs drape over his lap. He took hold of both of her hands and held them in his. “It was just a dream,” he reminded softly. “No matter how real it felt, you didn’t _choose_ me and Charlotte over having your mom still be alive. And even if you could have,” he added carefully, “you can’t let yourself feel guilty for choosing the present or the future over the past.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I know,” she assured him. “It’s just…sometimes I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if... I mean, I don’t know that I would have come back to New York if she hadn’t gotten sick.”

He raised his eyebrows, surprised. “Where were you?”

“I was in Paris,” she admitted. “I had a job with a pastry chef on the left bank.” She smiled faintly. “It’s where I learned my macaron recipe.”

He looked impressed. “Do you speak French?”

She laughed. “Uh, I _did._ I haven’t for five years but at one point,” she moved her shoulders modestly. “I spoke French, I smoked too much and I lived in this great attic apartment with a wonderfully sweet lesbian couple and four cats.” Darcy pressed her lips together and let herself remember the room she’d rented from Evangeline and Therese, the perpetually full ash trays and the smell of rain and spring that would drift in through the open windows.

“And you gave that up to come home?” he asked gently.

Darcy shrugged. “She needed me,” she said. “I told myself it was just for a little bit but then…”

“Then it wasn’t.” Steve swiped his thumb over the back of her hand again. She watched him contemplate his next question before he spoke again. “Do you ever…think about going back?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said honestly. “I have too much here now. Too much that I love.” She felt herself smile again. “That’s the thing. I love my life now. I love everything about it.” She paused and looked down at their hands again. “And I guess that’s why that nightmare upset me so much because I know, if I _had_ to choose…to do this all over again to end up here,” she looked up. “I would. I’d do everything the same if it meant ending up with you.” She chuckled sadly and shook her head again. “And saying that out loud makes me sound like a terrible daughter—”

Steve leaned down and covered her lips with his. She untwisted their fingers and let hers slide up into his hair. “You’re not a terrible daughter,” he said softly when they parted. “You’re not a terrible anything. You’re one of the best things that ever happened to me.” He pinned his forehead to hers smiled softly. “Got it?”

She mirrored his smile and let him steal another quick kiss. “Got it,” she whispered as Steve wrapped his arms tightly around her. She tucked her head under his chin and let her fingernails drift over his arm and shoulder.

He shifted to kiss the top of her head and she felt him smile into her hair. “Want to go back to bed?”

She looked up and nodded. “Yes, please.”

She kept their fingers entwined as they made their way back upstairs. Steve let her go when he closed his bedroom door; she was waiting on the edge of the bed, kneeling up to reach him better when he turned back to her. Her arms wound around his neck, pulling him in for another long, slow kiss. His hands went to her hips and slipped under her soft t-shirt.

He flattened his palms against her back, pulling a soft sigh from the back of her throat when he pulled away and pressed gentle kisses to the space below her ear.

Darcy ran her hands over his arms again and down to the hem of his shirt. She pulled at it teasingly until he let her go long enough for her to push it over his head and drop it to the floor behind them. Her nails scraped lightly down his chest and the planes of his stomach, drawing a low rumble of approval from him when he leaned in to kiss her again.

Steve was slower to undress her; he took his time as he slid her top higher and higher, pausing to palm her breasts with both hands and smother another groan against her lips. He broke away to slip her shirt the rest of the way off, fluffing her hair into her face. His hands held her cheeks delicately when he moved her curls out of her eyes and dropped his lips to her neck a second time.

“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he asked in between the chain of soft, warm kisses he left on her skin.

She didn’t answer but leaned back on the bed, pulling him with her, not wanting to miss one second of feeling him pressed against her. He followed her lead, laying her down gently amid the soft sheets and blankets. He nudged her chin up with his nose and resumed his trail of kisses along the hollow of her throat and over her collarbones.

No matter how many times Steve made love to her, Darcy wasn’t sure she could ever get used to this. The way he held her and covered her in these feather-light kisses and soft, teasing touches. How he could make her feel more beautiful than she’d ever let herself believe before. The way he could fan the flames in her belly and send that fire cascading to the tips of her fingers and toes, making her feel like a treat he wanted to savor while at the same time wanting to devour her whole.

He kissed his way down her chest and swirled his tongue over the stiffened peak of her nipple while he gave her other breast a gentle squeeze. Darcy smothered a groan when he switched sides and sucked the other tip into his mouth. She was about to ask him to do it again when he resumed his kisses, down the valley between her breasts and over the soft skin of her belly.

Flushed and almost embarrassingly wet, Darcy reached a hand to thread into Steve’s hair. He looked up from the kisses he was pressing to her stomach and held her gaze with a devilish sparkle in his eyes when he nipped playfully at the waistband of her pajama pants. The gentle scrape of his teeth tickled and she giggled as she lifted her hips and helped him slide the soft fabric down her legs.

Steve lowered himself to his knees at the edge of the bed and wrapped his arms around her legs, yanking her close and holding her open. She squirmed and had to swallow a whine when he dropped his head to kiss the freckle on her thigh. He looked up with another wicked smirk before he kissed her again. “Sorry?” he asked in a husky whisper. “Did you want something?”

He bypassed her throbbing center a second time to decorate her other thigh with a pattern of soft kisses and teasing flicks of his tongue. She wriggled again and groaned in frustration. “You know what I want,” she said around a sigh. She curled her nails against his scalp and coaxed his eyes back to hers. “Please, Steve?”

The soft moan he let out when he finally pressed his lips to hers and let his tongue sink into her was almost worth his teasing. Darcy bit her lip so hard she almost tasted blood and she had to turn her face into the pillows when he slipped his tongue upward to circle her clit with slow, deliberate strokes. “Jesus Christ,” she groaned; her hips arched off the bed as he brushed a particularly sensitive spot, drawing an unexpected yelp of pleasure from the back of her throat.

He pulled away with a soft laugh as she covered her mouth with her hand. “Shh,” he whispered around his smile, turning his head to place another loving kiss to the inside of her thighs.

She sank her fingers into his hair again and tugged gently. “Come up here and keep me quiet,” she said softly. She was plenty ready; her body was begging for more, for the feeling of him on top of her, for the two of them moving together, for proof that he was real and here with her.

Darcy missed him the second he moved away to rid himself of the last of his clothes. She moved back on the bed and reached for him when he joined her. He slid against her, setting her alight everywhere their skin met. She felt him stop just as the tip of his cock touched her entrance. Steve leaned down to capture her lips in a long, languid kiss. He stroked the side of her face and brushed his nose against hers. “Let me see those blue eyes,” he whispered.

His eyes, dark with lust, locked with hers as soon as she opened them and sent a shiver down her spine. He tipped his hips teasingly against hers twice before she wrapped her legs tighter around his waist and stretched up to press her lips to his ear. “I need you right n—” she cut herself off with a sharp gasp of pleasure as Steve sank into her with one thrust.

He turned his head and seized her open mouth with another kiss. He stroked his tongue against hers and pulled her bottom lip between his teeth. He pulled out all the way and thrust in completely a second time, swallowing the moan she made against his lips. His rhythm was slow and measured at first, each thrust filling her and hitting her just right, making it harder to keep quiet as their intensity mounted.

Darcy snapped her hips with his, meeting him each time and drawing him in deeper and relishing the groans of pleasure he was trying to control. He kissed her again and pinned their foreheads together, locking their gaze again. Darcy squeezed her legs tight around him again. “Faster,” she breathed, grateful when he listened and sped up his movements.

She was so close she could practically taste it. When Steve reached between them and stroked his fingers against her swollen clit, her orgasm rippled through her body in waves of warm, soft electric shocks. His hips jerked erratically as she clenched and pulsed around him and he came moments later with a soft whisper of her name on his lips. They stayed locked together, their foreheads touching as the room filled with the sound of hushed breathing and gentle kisses passed between them.

Darcy groaned in protest when Steve moved to pull out and lay beside her. He smiled sleepily as he propped himself up on one hand and pushed her hair out of her eyes again. “I love you,” he said simply, letting his fingers trail down her cheek and over her collarbones.

She smiled back and nudged at him until he rolled to his back and let her cuddle up against his chest. “I love you, too,” she said, pressing a quick kiss to his sternum before she rested her head over his heart. Her hair fell over them in a wild mess of dark curls and he tangled it in his fingers. “And just for the record,” she turned and glanced up with a smile. “I prefer _this_ cure for nightmares over Sister Bridget’s.”

Steve grinned and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll remember that,” he said with a laugh. His fingers drifted from her hair to her back and he trailed long, soothing strokes down her spine. She wanted to keep talking, to pass the rest of the night with him, trading kisses and touches, but her eyes were already falling closed and the soothing, steady rhythm of Steve’s heart was lulling her back to sleep.

When Darcy woke next, morning sun was streaming through the bedroom windows. The door was open a crack and she could hear the sounds of breakfast being made downstairs, of Charlotte talking excitedly about something she couldn’t make out. She sat up and pushed back her hair with a smile. The memory of her nightmare was already slipping away. The details that had felt so real and so painfully sharp were softening, fading from her mind, replaced by the memory of Steve’s lips on her skin, of his voice whispering in her ear.

Darcy got dressed and headed downstairs to help with breakfast.

**Author's Note:**

> Darcy's nightmare is taken from my own recurring nightmare that my mother is still alive, but I'm married to someone I don't recognize and no one's ever heard of my real husband and everything is wrong and awful. It's not fun. Not so surprisingly, it's kind of hard but also helpful to write about. 
> 
> As far as smut goes, I don't think it's my best. But I wanted this off my WIP list and it felt unfinished without the sex so. These things happen.
> 
> OH! And before I forget, @Amerna came up with Steve's short-lived modeling career and his meet-cute with Peggy. Because she's a g-damn genius and I love her.
> 
> Let me know your thoughts? I promise not to stay away so long next time.


End file.
